I haven't heard of any things like RFID, sensors, cloud-based video surveillance etc from the local papers. But there will be hearings on proposed new regulations in the coming weeks, whiich I'm sure will prompt an interesting discussion.

Is Mass. mandating these medical centers use RFID, sensors, cloud-based video surveillance and/or other technologies to make sure only authorized people are growing/prescribing/selling/using marijuana? And what kind of centralized database, if any, is the state using or expanding to include weed, I wonder?

I have a front row seat to the licensing. The state of Massachusetts just ok'd two facilities to receive license to grow and dispense medical marijuana in a neighboring town. They have to go through the normal local reviews and permitting processes. Should be interesting!

That would be interesting to discover. I believe it took quite a while in Colorado but it's steamrolling faster in other states. There are so many layers, from decriminalization to legalization, and so many states involved that it's a pretty convoluted process. Unfortunately, medical and recreational get lumped together. They shouldn't, I don't think, but they do.

There is a lot of compelling research from well-respected organizations around the world (Germany and Israel come to mind) that show something within marijuana holds promise. When a friend's mom was dying of cancer, her doctor gave her THC pills to help spark her appetite (they didn't work and her family had to try and figure out an alternative). Seems to me a lollipop laced with THC wouldn't have been worse and could have been better for her. And I wholeheartedly believe people on too much booze are more prone to behave badly than folks on too much weed. There is way too much anecdotal evidence for too many illnesses and conditions for it to be a fluke or lore.

That said, we have technological tools in place to control kids from getting marijuana. Let's use today's techs and borrow from successful (and steer clear of unsuccesful) attempts in other regulated industries like booze, gambling, smoking cigarettes, etc., which were targeted at adults, but attractive to kids. Let's learn from the pill mills that sprang up; use tech like analytics, big data, RFID early in the process, not afterward.

I'm with you on the attraction, being prone enough to lethargy without any chemical help. But given a choice between legalizing versus continuing to funnel tax dollars to the private prison industrial complex to lock people up for breathing burning leaves, I'll take the former every time.

Someone needs to do the long run analysis of how long it takes medical marijuana to lead to full legalization. Seems to be happening pretty fast. Is that a good thing? I wrote a middle school research project on why legalization makes sense, but I've never been a big pot smoker myself. Inhaling the fumes of burning leaves always struck me as a bad idea in general.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.